Stories of wit and warmth

Menu

Under a satellite dish

My husband, sometimes known as the salvage king because he can spot diamonds in the rough from the far side of a yard sale, found a satellite dish for the taking a few years ago. You know the kind: 9 feet tall and once proof that the homeowner was a techie pioneer but now are older than your grandmother’s television.

He dumped the dish in our pasture until he could make a run to the recycler. “I put it face down so the kids wouldn’t get caught under it,” he assured me. Good planbecause at that time our kids were pretty good at exploring in places where they didn’t belong.

He dumped – er, tenderly laid – the dish in the far corner of our 35-acre pasture. Shortly after, as the lovely prairie grass began to wave in the wind, we turned our sheep and goats loose to fend for themselves. It was much easier than tossing hay to them.

A few weeks later, I was doing my daily check of the herd and I could not find three baby goats. When you have 35 acres of rolling pasture, three little goats can find a lot of places to hide. I marched all 35 acres.

I was more concerned than their mothers, who munched the endless supply of prairie grass with no worries.

As I was completing my pasture sweep, our daughter said, “Be sure to check under the dish.”

“Oh, right. The dish that is lying face down on the ground so that you couldn’t get under it.”

She shrugged. “It wouldn’t hurt to look.”

So we looked. Three baby goats staggered out from under their dark cave.

I don’t know how they got under there. I don’t know why their mothers didn’t stand guard. I don’t know why it occurred to our daughter to suggest we search there.